Ivey Lane's evolution: From Rodney King to Trayvon Martin

Darryl E. Owens, Staff Writer

Two decades ago, a largely white jury from a Los Angeles suburb lit a perilously short racial fuse with two words: "Not guilty."

Four white Los Angeles police officers were freed on charges of excessive force in the brutal beating of Rodney King — a bludgeoning captured on videotape for repeated viewing by millions across the country.

Soon, South Central Los Angeles was ablaze. And in communities throughout the nation, blacks were caught in a back draft of frustration over social and economic disparities they faced.

Communities such as Ivey Lane, where residents along the 11/2--mile stretch west of downtown Orlando recited a laundry list of grievances to the Sentinel at the time, from low-paying jobs to education inequalities and more.

Twenty years later, the shooting of Trayvon Martin stoked familiar racial tensions across the country. The death of the black teen at the hands of neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman cast the young victim in the same symbolic spotlight that once made Rodney King a household name.

Along Ivey Lane, though, the anger from two decades ago has been hard to find in the wake of the Trayvon shooting. Poverty still exists, of course, and many of the same grievances from the King era remain.

But there's a surprising shift in residents' attitudes. Though most agree race still casts a long shadow, many insist that America's racial divide does not overwhelm their lives as it once did.

Time has wrought other changes to Ivey Lane as well — almost imperceptible changes that city and county officials insist provide a solid foundation on which to build.

True, for an area whose chief export once was crack cocaine, the daily sight of only a handful of lookouts and likely drug dealers pedaling around Big B Food Store qualifies as improvement.

Stepped-up police sweeps in response to residents' relentless pleas for help, coupled with the demolition of dilapidated shacks used by loitering prostitutes and junkies,thinned the drug trade in an area that police once described as an curbside drug mart.

Yet other than some newer, modest single-family homes, little has happened to offer residents hope of economic prosperity or even hint at the lifestyles enjoyed by residents in more-affluent areas of Orlando.

Any hope Ivey Lane ever will taste that sort of prosperity seems even further away now. The Pew Research Center recently found that whites' median net worth has grown to nearly 20 times that of blacks: $113,149 for white households in 2009 compared with $5,677 for blacks. That gulf is about twice as wide as the advantage whites enjoyed over minorities two decades before the Great Recession slammed America.

Despite these worsening economic disparities, though, the bitterness from 20 years ago has faded among many who call Ivey Lane their home. Today, their story is one of survival amid enormous odds. It's a story of shifting attitudes.

And it's a story of hope — a glimmer of hope.

The marathoner

Ed Wilson is a University of Florida-educated businessman who has lived in Ivey Lane since 1975, back when he hawked eight-track tapes.

"Somebody's got to stay and hold down the 'hood," he says.

Wilson represents the opportunity and the restraints blacks say they face. He runs his own business, Tintmaster Window Tinting. But he conducts business out of his garage.

Banks, he says, are reluctant to pony up loans to cash-and-carry outfits — the kind of businesses to which cash-poor black entrepreneurs gravitate.

"I went into a bank to get a loan; the lady sits down and looks at me, and I said, 'I [have] a truck that I make money with,' and her response was as if she assumed I was doing something illegal," says Wilson, a marathoner who in the 1970s helped integrate the Gators' track team.

"In other words, as if a black man can't legally, successfullyoperate his own business."

As Wilson sees it, race relations in Orlando have improved. "I'd say on a scale of 1 to 10, it's probably a 61/2 or 7."

However, his banking experience — he did not get the loan — is evidence "there's a lot of hidden racism," he says. "People still judging people by the color of skin."

Yet although he thinks race consciousness is a reality, he insists it's not a deal-breaker.

"I'd say that now it [race] matters about 30 percent," says Wilson, 60. "If you keep making excuses, you'll never make any advancement."

When it comes to advancing the dollar, Wilson is no Donald Trump. Still, he's keenly aware of the place he holds in a community where drug pushers scoff at those trying to live their own Horatio Alger story.

That, and his decision to stay, "all comes from my desire to be a positive role model," he says. "When you look at a black person, you don't want to just see something negative. You want to see something positive. And every time you see something positive, that helps negate the negative and slowly changes people's perceptions overall."

That's often a heavy lift in a community with so few opportunities.

Just then, Wilson glances at a cyclist making a beeline for Big B's Food Store. Wilson shakes his head at the possible drug dealer.

"I don't condone it," he says, "but I understand it."

The King of Ivey Lane

Outside Ivey Lane Dry Cleaners and Laundromat, a man with a gleaming mocha skull, a shaggy King Tut beard, a boxer's physique and Mickey Mouse shades chats with some homeboys. Another man exiting the Ivey Lane Food Market next door recognizes him and gives him a shout-out.

"Theori!"

"Yo."

"Everything good?"

For the man who has anointed himself "King of Ivey Lane," it's good to be the king. Perched on his milk-crate throne, his gold teeth gleam as he offers his take on Trayvon Martin.

"Trayvon, that's just a prime example of what people just don't know," says Theori, 37. "I could look at your color and just not know — it's way deeper than a color — that you're one of the nicest people on Earth."

That's the hard-won knowledge the street rapper has taken to sharing with Ivey Lane young bloods. Quite a departure from his days growing up in west Orlando, where, because "I didn't get to communicate with a lot of white folks, we thought racism was the thing to be in life."

But his theft and drug-related run-ins with the justice system since age 17 — and relationships he built during time spent in Ohio — led to an epiphany.

"I got around some diverse people, and I realized it's not about a color at all," he says. "It's about loving people."

And that revelation led to a reincarnation of sorts. Gerald Johnson became rapper Theori Cheeri, the first name an acronym for Talking Helps Educate On Racial Ignorance.

"There's a lot of negativity going on right around here," he says, "where we can't blame racism because ain't no white person knocking us."

Still, as he knows from experience, that can be a tough message to sell to inner-city youth.

"It's hard growing up on Ivey Lane," he says. "You can have the greatest parents on Earth, but if you're stuck in the heart of the ghetto, that's like being stuck in the belly of the beast. You see your pops barely getting paid every Friday and this other guy on the street corner making hundreds of dollars every day. There's certain things you want in life that your parent can't buy for you."

The taskmaster

Inside Victorious Living Church, children are on their knees. But they're not praying. Well, maybe some are. Most are engaged in eleventh-hour reviews.

It is D-Day, after all. Or, less dramatically, "Defense Day." As in students from the church's Victory Christian Academy private school defending their English III/American Government papers.

Principal LaKisha Robinson circles to the front of the chapel and addresses her blue-blazered charges.

"I don't want to hear clichés. I want to hear you answer questions according to what you've researched. In defending your paper, I don't want a sermon."

With that pep talk, she turns and joins the critique panel. Students will deliver a three-minute defense. The subject: "Is America Great?"

Robinson summons Ayshira Coleman. Ayshira hands copies of her report to panelists and dives into her defense, recapping America's birth.

"Socialism was a pure handout, so they were left with a republic."

As soon as she's done, the panel runs her through the gantlet.

Which Founding Father stood out most to you? What was the sole purpose of Thomas Paine's "Common Sense"?

Ayshira squeezes the podium in a death grip as she answers the questions. After the grilling, she concludes, "America was a great nation, but … [now] America is drinking from the cup of destruction. America is standing in quicksand. She does not believe in absolute truth."

"Thank you, Miss Coleman," Robinson says, wearing her poker face.

"Serious times two" describes Robinson when it comes to educating her charges. She knows what's at stake for these kids.

So teachers feed students at Victory, now in its 10th year, a steady diet of discipline and high expectations. In 2013, Ayshira will be part of the school's first high-school graduating class. Kids who grew up with the slogan "no excuses only reasons" and have been on multiple college tours.

"We put you on a plan from seventh grade until you graduate to think about college, to think about post-high school and to be serious about it and get out of this environment," Robinson says. "We're molding them into something that they don't naturally come from."

It's all about survival, Robinson says.

"We … believe you point students to the standard — you don't lower the standard. I think they do this area a disservice when they lower the standard and then [expect] them to leave this environment to excel anywhere."

The world, she says, won't lower the standard to appease her students.

The Entrepreneur

Like Robinson, Derrick Wallace believes in aiming high. And like the kids in Robinson's school, he had a taskmaster to make sure he hit his target.

Derrick Wallace.

As with many kids reared in the projects, Wallace didn't grasp his poverty.

"It was normal," he says of his six years in Ivey Lane Homes. "You really didn't know you were poor because everyone around you didn't have anything."

Still, something in Wallace drove him to change that paradigm. At 12, he started making and selling Mother's Day bouquets and mowing yards.

"I've been hustling all my life," he says, "always trying to figure out a how to make a dollar."

By the time Wallace graduated from Jones High School, and later Florida A&M University in 1975 with an accounting degree, he was well on his way to solving that puzzler. But the hustling didn't truly start until he took a leap and launched his company, Construct II Group — two years before the Los Angeles riots.

From its modest start as a subcontractor doing home renovations, Construct II has grown into one of Florida's largest black-owned construction-management firms, with more than $650 million in construction projects, including the Hulk and Spider-Man attractions at Universal Orlando and the Orange County Convention Center expansion under its belt.

But Wallace, 58, never forgot where he came from. His corporate office sits right on Ivey Lane — cater-corner to the projects where he spent his childhood.

"I just believed that there was nothing wrong with establishing your business in the African-American community," he says. "Most of my work does not come from the African-American community, but [it's important] to be here and for people to see."

Wallace also knows that his business, once an emblem of possibility, has now become a symbol of false hope to many who live along Ivey Lane.

He got his start because white guys helped him break in, learn the construction business and make it big. Today, that kind of bipartisan mentoring has dried up, he says, and has frozen out other blacks.

"Regardless of how people smile … there's still a race card that's being played," says Wallace, former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Orange County branch. "I had an opportunity presented ... I'm not saying I'm smart, that I did it all myself. I had people take an interest in me to do that. That's not the mind-set that's out there now."

It's a climate where set-asides are a curse word, and municipal minority goals have withered.

So Wallace does what he can, often hiring blacks so they can gain experience. He hired a black project manager and superintendent to preside over the $50 million Jones High reconstruction. A drop in the bucket, he concedes.

"If you only have one black firm that can do a $15 million project and is willing to hire blacks, but you've got $2 billion of work out there, they're only going to get one project," he says. "How can you grow the expertise as far as the black community?"

Except, he says, the children. "I believe in kids." Kids poised to follow his path, if not necessarily his trajectory, through Eccleston, Washington Shores, Ivey Lane or Richmond Heights elementary schools and Jones High, where he has invested in school enrichment.

"They may not see Ivey Lane as someplace to come back to [like Wallace has], but they are going to succeed and go on to college and other things," Wallace says. "It's about choices that these kids make. You can live in the black community and succeed."

The dreamer

And that's precisely what Kaniesha Grimmage intends to do. A block from Wallace's construction business, Grimmage perches on a jungle gym and strums the guitar her grandfather handed down at Christmas.

She has dreams. Big dreams. The Juilliard School. And Harvard Law.

No one can accuse the 13-year-old of aiming small, even though she has lived in the projects for the past five years.

"I'm reaching for a higher thing in life," Kaniesha says. "The poor people here aren't here because they choose to be. They're here because either they hit a bump in the road, or they're just starting out. People don't live here by choice."

Early on, Kaniesha made her own choice. Unlike her sisters or other little girls, she "didn't want to be a princess. I didn't want to be a singer. I wanted to be a lawyer."

To that end, she's earning A's and B's in school. Loves language arts and reading books such as "Pride and Prejudice," intrigued by the "romance of it." On the other hand, she has no stomach for prejudice — from those who espouse it or use it to swaddle their failures.

Her friends run all along the color line. "You shouldn't choose your friends off their race. To me that's ignorance. You should choose your friends based on their personality and how you vibe with them."

And though she still overhears adults consumed with race, Kaniesha has no patience for those who trot out race as a multipurpose excuse.

"Sometimes they say, 'I would go to school, but they didn't accept me because I was black,' and it's like, 'No, they didn't accept you because your grades were terrible, awful.' They didn't accept you because you didn't apply yourself, and if you worked harder, I bet they'll accept you.' "

It's the bet on which her future — and that of every other child from Ivey Lane — rides.